Referring to the hunger strike by a drought-affected farmer at Mumbai’s Azad Maidan, Pawar had said “He has been on fast for the last 55 days. (But)If there is no water in the dam, how can we release it? Should we urinate into it? If there is no water to drink, even urinating is not possible.”
This is what Mr. Ajit Pawar said in relation to something as tragic and yet as common and equally dismal a state of affairs of Indian farmers. Crores of rupees in the form of revenue foregone are lost because of no taxation on corporates.
And yet, there is no money for improvement of infrastructure, inputs and irrigation for more sustainable and profitable farming – a sector which accounts for an overwhelming chunk of this agro based economy.
It is a well known fact that in India a farmer commits suicide every half an hour. And the kind of insensitivity manifested by Mr. Ajit Pawar here is hardly anything new. Earlier also, similar hurtful and shameless remarks have been made by our “esteemed” leaders [question is: where do they lead us to?!]. Farmers who took their lives were said to have had “family feuds” and other such blatant attempts were made to shift the blame and evade responsibility by those in power.
P. Sainath’s articles on farmer suicides in India will be a good place to start digging up the mountains of information on the deplorable state of agriculture and the people associated with it.
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